Dining chairs are perhaps the most difficult design challenge: they employ virtually no right angles, yet they need to be simultaneously lightweight, strong, comfortable and attractive.  Mass-production often fails in at least one of these criteria, and the most successful are still hand-built one at a time through the centuries-old Winsor, or centuries-older bodging method.

 

In the 1950’s, Sam Maloof – one of the founders of the American Craft Furniture movement – explored more sculptural ways of chair building.  These designs were developed out of his techniques.